Talon (The Astor Chronicles Book 1)

by Greenslade, Amanda

  I shook my head. ‘Namal did offer, but they are going to need every asset they have to survive and pay for allied warriors.’

  She looked into my eyes and then blinked her agreement. It was such a catlike gesture that I barely registered what she had done. There were other feline things about her, such as the way she perked her head up from time to time and stared around sniffing the air. Most Rada experienced an increase in their nasal acuity, simply because they came to recognise certain smells through their kin to which they wouldn’t normally have paid attention.

  ‘Lead on,’ Sarlice said, gesturing ahead.

  We dismounted outside a small red-daubed building, unloaded the Rada-kin and stacked our gear on the porch out the front of the inn. After sniffing each other, the two tigers moved around the side of the building to groom themselves in the shade. A couple of children who had been playing nearby screamed and ran away.

  I held the door open for Sarlice to enter the Pottage Inn. Inside to our left was a man sitting on a barrel pretending to be a knight on a fine steed. Behind him was a girl pretending to be the knight’s page boy and a second man playing a lute.

  ‘Young couple moving in to town?’ a high-pitched voice carried across the room as the owner of the inn approached us.

  ‘We are ambassadors for Jaria and Lyth,’ I corrected him, ‘passing through Tasset.’

  ‘Very well,’ he replied, stroking his pointy black moustache. ‘My name is Blakton, and you have come to the finest affordable tavern in town. What needs have you?’

  ‘Two rooms for two nights,’ Sarlice said, raising her voice to carry over the performance behind us.

  ‘That would be four weights of silver and seventy-three bronze,’ he replied smoothly.

  Sarlice glanced at me with a look of distaste.

  ‘We have stories to tell in the evening,’ I said to Blakton in my most appealing voice. ‘And I think we could share a room to save costs.’

  Sarlice nodded her assent.

  ‘What kind of stories,’ Blakton queried, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘We are both well versed in the Kriite Holy Scrolls,’ Sarlice replied, ‘and I know the complete tales of Dilron the serf, The Queen’s Secret Lover and the epic Tiger Eyes and Dragon Teeth’.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ Blakton replied, ‘you may take the north facing suite with two meals a day for one weight of silver and sixty bronze provided one of you is available in the tavern from dusk until late to keep my guests from thinking too carefully about what they are spending.’

  He winked.

  ‘What about when they are performing?’ I asked, pointing at the barrel-riding act. ‘Can we both take a break, then?’

  ‘Aye,’ he replied, pointing up the stairs to the open door of the north-facing suite.

  ‘And food for our animals, too?’ Sarlice asked sweetly.

  The man’s face soured, ‘What animals have you?’

  ‘A firetiger and an icetiger, sir,’ Sarlice began. ‘Shortly to be joined by two horses.’

  ‘Throw in an extra silverweight,’ he said, ‘and we’ll provide feed for your horses. The cats can have what’s left over from each day’s eating.’

  ‘And a leg of beef today,’ I negotiated.

  Blakton made a churling noise deep in his throat, scratched the back of his head and, finally, agreed. Sarlice picked up as much of her gear as she could carry and headed up the stairs. Blakton and I hefted the rest of it and followed her. I paid the man his dues and closed the door behind him, glad to shut out the bellowing from below.

  Our suite was a room with two beds and enough space between them to fit a low bench with drawers facing each bed. Once I had stowed my gear, I lay on my back to rest. It was nice to lie in a bed again even if it was just a palliasse on a slab of wood. The canvas tick the straw was stuffed into was stained and the pillows were browned and dusty from many years of abuse. Sarlice covered her bed with a green tunic from her pack.

  ‘Hey in there,’ Kestric called to both of us on the waves, ‘we want our meat.’

  ‘We might as well take a look at these horses now,’ Sarlice said, ‘before the fat barrel-rider and his wailing companion are through deafening the crowd.’

  On our way out of the Pottage Inn, we wheedled the raw leg of beef off the cook, in addition to three bones with some skin and sinew. Outside, the tigers just about knocked each other over in their eagerness to reach us, but Rekala, being the larger and the most recently turned Rada-kin, won first chew of the beef. After making sure they took their food out of sight behind the tavern, we continued on to the stables nearby.

  ‘I’ve never purchased a horse, before,’ I admitted, ‘but I will know a good one when I ride it.’

  Sarlice introduced herself to the horse-merchant who ran the stables behind the inn. After checking the general health of the horses, we chose four of them to be prepared for riding.

  While we were waiting, I asked Sarlice, ‘What about your family? You know so much about mine….’

  Sarlice looked down. ‘Well… my mother died birthing me. My father, Laars, was the battle commander and my brother, Gelvin, was one of his soldiers. When I was three, Gelvin got lockjaw from a dire wound and suffered for days before taking himself off into the mountains of Siffre to die. We never saw him again. I was more or less raised by my aunt and uncle, but Aunt Rae died of the pheasant plague when I was seven. My father never knew what my uncle had become….’

  I turned to face her, leaning my back on the rail I had been resting my arms on. She had a pained expression, the corners of her mouth pinched down and lines across her brow. Kestric noticed her distress from behind us at the inn and sent a series of questions through the waves to the two of us. Although I couldn’t hear Sarlice on the waves, I knew when she reassured her Rada-kin, because his presence calmed. Sarlice gave me a sheepish grin.

  ‘What had your uncle become?’ I pressed her gently.

  She spun on her heel, biting her lip and staring off into the desert to the south. When she started speaking again, her voice was shaking and her fists were so tightly clenched they turned from golden tanned to pale.

  ‘I’ve never really spoken to anyone about it,’ she began, ‘certainly not my father. My uncle was… more… familiar than he should have been with young girls.’

  I stared at her, horrified at her words, but also touched that she had chosen to share this with me. I had no idea what to say.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ Kestric suggested, reading my thoughts, ‘just listen. Sarlice has never dealt with this before. This could be a turning point for her adult life.’

  I was still wondering what Kestric had meant by ‘adult life’ when Sarlice patted my hand. I experienced a surge of sensation, including foreign and disturbing sights, sounds, smells and feelings, but they flashed through my mind so fast I couldn’t identify a single one of them, much less determine where they came from. I guessed it was a memory echo of some kind, passed on accidentally by Kestric through the waves, coinciding with Sarlice’s touch by chance.

  ‘I was with child for three or four months when I was eleven,’ Sarlice whispered hoarsely. Realisation dawned on me. ‘My uncle was the first to notice, and he made sure he was also the last.’

  I blinked at her and glanced around to make sure nobody else was listening.

  ‘You’re offended that I told you about this,’ Sarlice concluded from my shocked silence.

  ‘Nay,’ I replied emphatically. ‘Just splittin’ angry, for you!’

  ‘You’re not… you’re not disgusted by me now?’

  I turned my hand around so that I could hold hers in it, surprised that she didn’t pull away because of the eerie, smooth feel of the scars on my palm.

  I stammered a little when I replied, ‘N… nay. I am sorry you had to endure such abuse.’

  ‘It was abuse,’ she agreed. She covered her lower lip with her upper, sniffed and tried unsuccessfully to hold back her tears.

  Although I’d ne
ver experienced anything like what she had, I guessed that the reason she told me about it was because of the losses I had been through—she thought I would understand her pain. A few tears made tracks in the dust on her face, but she made not a sound. Following my instincts, I reached out to her and pulled her into a loose embrace. She wrapped her arms behind my back and bowed her head against my shoulder.

  I hesitated for a moment, then caressed the back of her head, smoothing the runaway curls. She snuffled and squeezed me tighter. Her hair smelt of woodsmoke and the familiar, alluring smell I had come to associate with Sarlice. Smell? I’m thinking like an icetiger! It was nice to be so close to her, but I forced my mind away from that train of thought.

  After a few minutes, she stood back and wiped her eyes, laughing to hide her embarrassment.

  ‘What happened to your uncle when you got older?’ I asked.

  Her eyes became distant once more and I guessed another shocking admission was on the way.

  ‘I killed him when I was fourteen,’ she replied, staring into space. ‘He came for me in the forest one day and I waited until he was lying right on top of me before drawing my hunting knife and stabbing him through the neck.’

  I gulped and ran one hand through my hair. ‘How terrible for you. How did you explain it?’

  ‘A maquis raiding party,’ she replied. ‘My uncle died to save me….’

  A bitter laugh escaped my throat. ‘That bastard will be remembered as a hero because of you.’

  A ball of boiling rage ignited and churned inside me. I wanted no other child to ever go through what Sarlice had, and I said to myself I would dismember any man who ever tried.

  ‘It’s never enough to want to defend them,’ Kestric counselled me, sharing his words with Sarlice and Rekala as well. ‘These predators wait until their prey is alone and they have no defender.’

  Tears streamed down Sarlice’s face, but she looked right at me, moved by the intensity of my reaction. Kestric allowed me to sense a fraction of his Rada’s emotions so that I would realise how much guilt was tangled up in her memories of her uncle.

  ‘You were not to blame,’ I told her firmly. ‘You were a child and he violated you. Even that word is not strong enough to describe it. There is a word in Kaslonican—do you know it?’

  ‘Rade,’ Sarlice mumbled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Literally “the rape of mind and body”. But that doesn’t justify murder. Slaying him was wrong.’

  ‘You were defending yourself,’ I argued.

  Across the other side of the corral the horse-merchant emerged with two saddled horses from the stable. Sarlice hastily wiped away her tears.

  ‘I should have told somebody what he was doing,’ she replied. ‘To this day nobody from Lyth even knows.’

  ‘He would have killed you,’ I replied, accepting the reins from the horse-merchant when she arrived.

  Sarlice did the same, mounting up faster than I could.

  ‘At least I wouldn’t have had to live with the shame of what I did,’ she said.

  I walked my horse in a circle around hers. It was a fleabitten grey mare with bony withers and a nervous way of tossing her head and chomping on the bit.

  ‘You feel guilty about slaying your uncle,’ I said.

  She booted her horse hard in the ribs and leaned forward as it launched into a canter. Dust flew up around the corral as she circled the outer edge. The chestnut she was riding had a loping gait that would eat up the miles but might not be very comfortable.

  ‘This one feels like a rocking horse,’ she confirmed after slowing to walk beside me.

  My grey reached out to bite the chestnut so I wheeled her away, forcing her to spin in a tight circle. Sarlice kicked her horse into a trot and raced around behind me, coming up on the right side, forcing the grey to lurch left. I leaned back and pulled on the reins to bring the mare to a halt. Sarlice and I both dismounted and walked the horses back to the horse-merchant who was busy talking to some other customers.

  ‘We’ll try the others,’ I said to her.

  After the woman had walked away with the horses, Sarlice whispered forcefully to me, ‘My uncle was drunk that day, and any time he was drunk he was even rougher than usual. He’d already split my lip and blackened one side of me. I would have been permanently injured or slain if I hadn’t done something to defend myself. I did what… I had to….’

  ‘There,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You finally started talking some sense.’

  ‘I’ll show you sense,’ she said, reacting to my amused expression with a comical look of her own. When the horse-merchant handed over her next mount, Sarlice thanked her and climbed aboard. This time, we both had blacks: Sarlice on a mare and myself on a gelding. The horses seemed to know each other and were eager enough to start trotting around the arena.

  After a few passes, Sarlice whooped and flew forward at the canter. In seconds, she was behind me, making my horse surge into a canter. I let him go, impressed by the ease with which he outstripped the mare. Sarlice tried her hardest to catch us, shouting with enthusiasm—when I glanced back I was glad to see a smile upon her face—but try as she might she could not catch me on my black gelding.

  He was soft-mouthed, comfortable and responsive, three traits that, when combined with the speed and musculature, sold me. Even though there were other geldings of excellent breeding I didn’t bother riding them. Sarlice had a similar feeling about her black mare.

  I let her do the bargaining, with the horse merchant. After paying for the animals, we led them away.

  ‘I’ll name her “Duria” because she’s come all the way from Duuryn.’

  ‘Is that where they’re from?’ I asked, leading my gelding into a stall in the Pottage Inn’s stable.

  ‘Yes, didn’t you see the signs?’

  ‘Nay, I didn’t look,’ I admitted. ‘I was too busy talking to you.’

  Sarlice looked me in the eye, lost for words but clearly thankful for my interest and sensitivity. We poured grain from the stable’s storage crates into the horses’ feed troughs and brushed them down with handfuls of straw, getting our hands very dirty.

  There was a communal hand-cleaning bowl on the way into the Pottage Inn, so we made use of it before walking over to a table in the corner closest to the fireplace. Rekala and Kestric followed us inside, causing a few people to pause and stare. The two tigers made an attractive pair—one with fur the colour of fire, the other made up in the hues of winter. Rekala’s coat was still mostly dull grey, with dusky black stripes and spots here and there. I patted her head and scratched behind her ear with as much force as I could.

  ‘You’ve told me about one aspect of your childhood, but that can’t be all that has made you into the strong, confident woman you are today.’

  ‘I’m surprised you think I’m strong after that display,’ Sarlice whispered.

  ‘I know you don’t usually let that side of you show. Therefore it was strong of you to do so.’

  Sarlice cocked her head at me, clearly enthralled by the way we had connected.

  ‘It is good to have the Rada-kin enhancing our communication, but I’ve never experienced anything quite like this before. I’m guessing it’s because Kestric can use the waves directly with you. There is no emotion being lost in the transition from me to my Rada-kin to your Rada-kin, then to you.’

  ‘You’ll have to be my guide on what’s normal communication between Rada,’ I replied. ‘Everything is new to me. I assumed I had been missing out on this with my fellow Jarians all this time.’

  ‘Nay,’ she countered. ‘It’s not usually like this.’

  We drank and ate together for an hour, swapping stories from our past and commenting on how we would do things differently if we had been the adults in those scenarios. We agreed that the world of adulthood was filled with responsibilities that children could never imagine, but that nothing was more important than being there for family members in their format
ive years. What we had both lacked in our childhood was a part of us now, but it was something that we could look back on with objectivity and learn from.

  It was in this mood of enlightenment and friendship that Sarlice and I told stories to the gathered people at the Pottage Inn that night. Never before had anyone recited the tales of Dilron the serf with so much empathy. As the fireplace burned low the last of the tavern’s patrons drank their wine Sarlice drew her tale to a close, giving me a wink when she delivered the final line.

  Two days later we made our way to the trail that would soon follow the River Jarvi to Telby City. It started with a road across the desert. A herd of camels was grazing in the distance. I recalled Rekala’s promise to catch one for me in return for the fish.

  ‘I’ve heard of man-eating leopards on these plains,’ Sarlice commented, ‘but have never seen any’.

  ‘Wild animals are the least of my concerns,’ I muttered to myself.

  I didn’t want to burden Sarlice with my nagging fear about the Zeikas.

  Besides, I told myself, they don’t know where I am. What reason would they have to bother about me?

  ‘The same reason they “bothered about you” on the plains near Tez,’ Tiaro piped up. ‘The same reason that Zeika came to Jaria to talk with Arone and killed him.’

  ‘Because the Zeikas want me alive for some reason?’

  ‘It is certain,’ Tiaro replied. ‘And let’s hope your moving away from Jaria is in everyone’s favour, not their disadvantage.’

  I shuddered. The last thing I wanted was for Jaria to fall under attack now that I was gone. Yet it seemed absurd that my presence would make such a difference. Anzaii I might be, but I was as green as a newborn foal.

  As we were walking I adjusted the length of one of my stirrups and sat back in the saddle. My new black horse seemed pleased to be on the road, stepping out with enthusiasm and with his ears pricked up. Sarlice rode ahead, scanning the terrain.

  We stopped at the river early in the evening and let the horses paw at the water’s edge, splashing themselves. Capril and Naeva were visible in the teal coloured sky; one moon to the east and one to the west. I gathered kindling and logs for a small fire and lit a fire with my steel and flint. Sarlice and I set up the canvas shelter we were to share. I had found some abandoned fence rails while gathering firewood and made use of them for propping up the shelter.